A team of Peruvian doctors successfully have removed a "parasitic twin" from the stomach of a three-year-old boy.
Dr Carlos Astocondor of the medical team at Las Mercedes Hospital, in the northern port of Chiclayo, said the condition occurs in approximately one of every 500,000 live births.
He said the partially formed foetus weighs more than a kilogram and is 25 centimetres long.
According to Dr Astocondor, "everything was smooth" and the prognosis is "good". However, the surgery was complicated due to the foetus being attached to the boy's liver and kidney - requiring the help of a cardio-vascular surgeon.
Dr Astocondo explained that the brain, heart, lungs and intestines never developed after the foetus was absorbed by the other foetus inside the mother's womb.
He says it has some hair on the cranium, eyes and some bones.
The boy's parents said that he had complained of abdominal pains for some time, but doctors in the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon had not noticed anything.
It was paediatricians in the city of Chiclayo that were able to detect the "parasitic twin" - also known as a "fetus in fetu".
APTN